« Jewlia Eisenberg and Frank London | Home | Exposing the UN with YouTube »
April 01, 2007
CNN Correspondent Michael Ware continues to drink heavily on camera
[ UPDATE: Ware claims and video shows that he did not heckle McCain. ]
Michael Ware has been Exhibit A in the controversy over unprofessional partisan journalism in the Iraq War. Make that inebriated unprofessional partisan journalism. (And unlike Christopher Hitchens, he isn't an eloquent principled dignified drunk, but a sloppy one.)
Last year Ware made unsubstantiated accusations about sexual abuse by US troops, to Bill Maher's TV audience, live and defiantly drunk in Baghdad. (Video here. YouTube now has the videos, so I added them to the end of this post.)
Following that spectacle, Hugh Hewitt interviewed Ware and bloggers commented on the interview. (Links here.) Then Hewitt played the interview back to both Hitchens and Victor Davis Hanson, who respond to Ware's ravings.
As a result of that controversy, Ware went from being the Time Bureau Chief to "a CNN correspondent." But he's still drunkenly flaunting his partisan persona, and I guess CNN is okay with that; disgracing the journalism profession on network news brings in more viewers. And in Michael Ware, CNN has a direct conduit to terrorist snuff videos, always a money-maker.
Someone on the Powerline Forum says Ware is indeed like that all the time:
this is quite typical of Ware’s views and behavior. I observed him off and on up close in Baghdad for over a year, and he was consistently clueless and enthusiastically pushing the most ludicrous interpretation of events.I distinctly recall over-hearing a conversation in which he was breathlessly relating the tale of a US unit in Anbar so besieged by the noble muj that they were low on supplies, etc. As though (even with our disastrous refusal to fight the war seriously, for the most part) the “insurgents” could mount a conventional effort that would last more than a few hours if we simply decided to end it by an easy application of our power, or as if the situation were comparable to some conventional set-piece action in Europe in WWII.
It’s of course easy to adopt Ware’s arrogant, snarky attitude, which glories in every daily bump and set-back - but it’s a lot easier because the adults remain silent, refusing to talk to the public, refusing to set the terms of discussion in some reasonable, historically literate context, refusing to educate. So it’s a microcosm of the situation (well laid out in the PowerLine post linking to the blog of the soldier in southern Iraq): an idiotic, unserious anti-war contingent on one side, and a hesitant, silent, sometimes bumbling war management team on the other.
Of course the senators themselves are well placed to raise the level of discussion, by noting that as in much of life (just more so here), things suck and there is progress at the same time. I would be stunned if either of these two managed to accomplish that. They’ve not been much more use in this regard than the rest of their colleagues.
CNN, folks. The people who sucked up to Saddam so they could get stories, whose CEO accused our soldiers of deliberately targeting journalists, without any evidence at all. Michael Ware is still their man in Baghdad.
RELATED: As veteran Ware-watchers, we noticed when an episode of CSI about "fauxtography" featured a character who could very easily be a take-off on Ware, scruffy Aussie persona and all.
Ware starts at 7:00:
And continues here:
Judith | 04/01/07 at 08:33 PM | Categories: - The Fourth Estate
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.keshertalk.com/cgi-bin/mtb.cgi/6407
Comments
Hmmm. Ultra-rightwing blog cites unknown "official" critical of Ware. Yup... that certainly isn't in and of itself "biased" reporting now is it? Fuck you guys are stupid.
Lets say for a second this is true, and really... I wouldn't be surprised if it is. Ware has actually been in Iraq for months, and has acutally witnessed what's going on. I don't give a rats ass if McCain is a Senator, veteran, or Jesus fucking Christ himself... the asshole lied when he said "“There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today.”
When you speak such bullshit... you get called on it. I can't wait till somebody says something like this to your retard-in-chief.
Kougar | April 1, 2007 09:27 PM
